Jade Slats and Stone Strips

Small strips, carefully suspended

The early comparisons lie in northeast China, the Russian Far East and Japan. They have a continuous body without a separate head, shoulders or tang. Some are nephrite; others are serpentinite, rhyolite or incompletely identified stone. Their names—pendant, perforated axe, or bi-shaped object—combine descriptions with interpretations, rather than establishing one use.

At Xiaonanshan in northeast China, M1:23 has a flat back, slightly convex front and a tiny hole drilled from both faces. Its companion M1:24 has curved edges but no hole described or drawn. Both came from the badly disturbed 1991 discovery: their nominal burial association cannot establish an intact pair or borrow the dates of later excavations. Zhao, Sun and Du describe the objects on p.71 · archived.

At Kurawa on Hachijō Island, Japan, both faces and thin profiles of the two strips are drawn, but the published passage gives no individual measurements. Their reported position beside a woman’s head gives the comparison an unusually useful body context. Fukuda 1999, p.26, fig.5:42–43 · archived.

Published interpretations

The published explanations vary with place and period. For Kurawa in Japan, Fukuda reports Fujita’s hair-ornament interpretation · archived: two strips lay beside the back of an adult woman’s head. That position supports wearing them, but does not reconstruct how they were fastened. Fukuda also cautions against directly equating Kurawa with the differently ended Sannai-Maruyama strips.

For Hokkaido’s perforated axes, Tatsuta considers ornaments, then favors portable tools or stone carried for reworking · archived. His reasons include reworked fractures, redrilling and smooth, apparently cord-related wear above the holes of two Nakano B objects he examined. This explains a carried attachment; it does not identify Heiwa’s thin strips individually.

For Xiaonanshan’s bi-shaped jades, Wang Renxiang proposed eating utensils · archived, comparing bone bi and a fish-scale deposit of the Xinkailiu culture. The published forum account names no individual specimen and reports no food-residue or wear test. It cannot identify the two disturbed 1991 strips by itself.

The later Chinese pieces are published as yue (axe-like blades), zhang (blades or scepters) and ge (dagger-axes). Their edges and deposits inform tool and ceremonial readings; the names alone do not prove use. The studies cited here report no acoustic trial or diagnostic spinning wear. Testing selected strips as bullroarers is this study’s proposed experiment, distinct from those published interpretations.

Eleven specimens and one useful counterexample

Dimensions below are length × width × thickness in millimetres. Reported means a published numeric dimension, not a new measurement. Estimated identifies measurements taken from drawings. A dash means unavailable; it does not mean zero.

Scroll sideways to compare all columns.

The Japanese measurements come from Tatsuta’s table · archived and Fukuda’s figures 4–5 · archived; the Russian dimensions are in Deng and Deng’s description of fig.1:7 · archived. The later Chinese specimens are documented in the sources below. None of these selected objects has a published mass in the evidence used here.

Larger blades, sharper edges

The later Chinese objects belong beside the early strips as comparisons, not as an assumed continuation of their function. At Bicun in Shanxi, A017 combines a broad plane with an exceptionally thin body. Wang Xiaoyi calls it a yue, an axe-like blade, and distinguishes such nearly parallel-sided examples from trapezoidal ones. Its Late Longshan attribution follows the site and comparison: A017 was not one of the paper’s three formally excavated pieces. Wang 2018, pp.72–74 · archived.

At Baojingwan on the Guangdong coast, the 3.5 mm body of T11③B:249 was polished smooth and sharpened on three sides. The report calls a long groove beside its hole a sawing trace. The refits and missing margins matter: the surviving blade cannot supply a complete original outline or balance. Its ceremonial or hafted yue interpretation remains stronger than an acoustic identification. Baojingwan report, pp.146–147, fig.98:1 · archived.

Xinhua in Shaanxi supplies different evidence. Its thin K1:8 stood with other jades arranged vertically in an ordered deposit; a small central hollow held bird bones. The excavators called the object a zhang, a blade or scepter. This treatment supports a valued or ceremonial object, but cannot identify its earlier performance. The National Palace Museum’s ridgeless jade ge adds a further warning: its eye lies well inside the strip, leaving a substantial short tail. A replica must preserve that arrangement. Xinhua excavation brief, pp.5–6,9 · archived.

What a cord can tell us

Wear belongs to the object on which it was observed. Tatsuta’s Nakano B observations cannot be transferred to Heiwa’s thin slats. Likewise, cord traces on the grooved Chertovy Vorota specimens do not establish wear on its plain fig.1:7. Unreported wear remains unknown.

The useful experiment would begin with each object’s measured section, mass and actual hole position. Replicas should be compared under free suspension, body contact, fixed binding and whirling; microscopic cord-contact traces should then be judged without knowing which treatment made them. Sustained rotation and sound would establish capability. Agreement between archaeological wear and the experimental traces could begin to identify use. That is the distinction these stone strips make especially clear: a possible vibrating blade is a physical proposition; an ancient bullroarer is a historical one.

The comparative catalogue

Measurements are length × width × thickness in millimetres. A dash means unreported; ≈ marks an estimate. Groups and possible duplicate objects remain labelled. Download the specimen table.